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Saints and Biographies

The Meaning of Virtue in St. Thomas Aquinas

by Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J.

Until modern times the relationship of morals
to religion was taken for granted, and writers as far different in philosophy
as Plato and Avicenna, or in theology as Aquinas and Luther, never questioned
the basic truth expressed on Mt. Sinai when Yahweh gave the Jews the Decalogue,
the first precepts of which were to honor God as a foundation for the secondary
precepts of the moral law.

But something new has entered the stream of
human thought, the concept of man’s autonomy that wishes to dispense with religion
in its bearing on morals, on the grounds that the very notion of religious values
is only a mental construct. Whatever bearing they may have on ethical principles,
it is not as though the concept of God was a necessary condition for being moral
in the current, accepted sense of the term.

When Julian Huxley boldly proclaimed that he knew nothing of a personal Deity
be he Yahweh, or Allah, or Apollo, he was saying more than meets the eye. “I
am not merely agnostic on the subject,” he insisted. “I disbelieve in a personal
God in any sense in which that phrase is ordinarily used.” [1] His protest was born of a conviction that the practical effect
of theism is to stultify human effort. Where the fifth century monk Pelagius
denied the existence of grace because he felt this encouraged lazy dependence
on supernatural aid, latter day critics of religion would remove the existence
of God for the same reason except that their Pelagianism is more complete, perhaps
because their confidence in Man is so extreme.

Aristotle and Aquinas

To illustrate and examine the relation of religion
and morality, I have chosen Thomas Aquinas, the thirteenth century theologian
whose principles were the standard of ethical teaching up to the Reformation
and since then have become fundamental in Christian moral theology. Since Aquinas
depended so heavily on Aristotle, it will pay to review the Aristotelian position
on ethics, see its religious dimension, and then study Aquinas somewhat in depth
by way of contrast with Aristotle—as the mainstay of an ethical system
which believes that God and religious values are primary, and that true goodness
is to be measured in terms of an ultimate finality, reasoned by man’s natural
intellection but fully possessed only on the basis of the Christian faith.

The broad outline of Aristotle’s teaching is
found in the Nichomachean and Eudemian Ethics, where he writes
at great length of the human good. The good for man, according to Aristotle,
is an active use or exercise of those faculties which are distinctively human,
that is, the powers of mind and will, as distinct from the lower faculties of
feeling, nutrition and growth.

Human excellence thus defined shows itself
in two forms: the habitual subordination of the senses and lower tendencies
to rational rule and principle, and in the exercise of reason in the search
for the contemplation of truth. The former kind of excellence is described as
moral, the latter as intellectual virtue.

A well-known feature of Aristotle’s ethics
which deeply influenced Aquinas is the theory that each of the moral virtues
is a mean between excess and defect; thus courage is a mean between cowardice
and rashness, and liberality is a mean between stinginess and prodigality.

In the Politics, Aristotle sets forth
the importance of the political community as the source and sustainer of the
typically human life. But for Aristotle the highest good for man is found not
in the political life, nor even in the performance of the moral virtues as such.
The highest good consists in the theoretical inquiry and contemplation of truth.
This alone, he says, brings continuous and complete happiness because it is
the activity of the highest part of man’s complete nature, and of that part
which is least dependent on externals, namely the intellect of intuitive reason.
Therefore, through contemplation of the first principles of knowledge and being
man participates in that activity of pure thought which constitutes the eternal
perfection of the divine nature, which is God.

In Thomas Aquinas, much of the structure of Aristotle
and a great deal of his insight are retained, to the point that a superficial
reader might suspect that Aquinas merely baptized the Stagirite or put Aristotelian
concepts into a Christian mold. Actually the change from one to the other was
radical and a correct understanding of Christian morality must take this mutation
into account.

Aquinas believed what Aristotle never dreamed:
that man is more than a composite of body and soul, that he is nothing less
than elevated to a supernatural order which participates, as far as a creature
can, in the very nature of God. Accordingly, a person in the state of grace,
or divine friendship, possesses certain enduring powers, the infused virtues
and gifts, that raise him to an orbit of existence as far above nature as heaven
is above earth, and that give him abilities of thought and operation that are
literally born, “not of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of
God.” Nowhere else does the true character of the supernatural appear more evident
than in the endowments of infused virtue which some people possess and others
do not, and that make some capable of spiritual actions which others cannot
perform.

In the Thomistic system, the soul is the substantial
form of the body, which gives man all that is properly human and places him
essentially into the natural order; sanctifying grace or justification, by analogy,
is the accidental form of the soul, which gives the same man all that is properly
divine and puts him habitually into the family of God. Comparing the two with
each other, the soul is the foundation of natural existence, as sanctifying
grace is the principle of supernatural life.

Yet we know that the soul is not all we have
in the body, that the soul itself has powers through which it operates and by
which it gives expression to its rational nature. Even so, by a divine consistency,
the “soul of the soul,” as sanctifying grace has been called, must have channels
for the deiform life that God confers on the just. They are the virtues, theological
and moral, according to their respective purposes; not unlike the native abilities
through which mind and will come into contact with us.

Theological Virtues

Etymologically, Aquinas derived “virtue” from
the same root as the Latin vir (man) and vis (power), suggesting
that in its primitive sense virtue implied the possession of such masculine
qualities as strength and courage and, in the moral order, of goodness and human
perfection.

The Scriptures have several equivalents for the Vulgate virtus, notably
ischus (strength or power), dunamis (might), and arethe (moral
excellence or perfection). In the Hebrew Old Testament there is no specific
word for virtue, but in the Septuagint arethe is used in the books written
originally in Greek to mean moral goodness or a particular moral quality. [2] In the New Testament the Greek word for virtue is used only five
times; twice to describe the powers of God, and twice meaning moral vigor and
only once of moral virtue in particular. [3]

In the patristic period, theological virtues
were the subject of frequent writing and, in Pelagian times, of controversy.
The commentaries of the Fathers on St. Paul offer a complete treatise on every
phase of faith, hope and charity; and St. Augustine’s Enchiridion (or
Manual of the Christian Religion) was always referred to by him as “a
book on Faith, Hope, and Charity.” For Augustine, therefore, a summary of these
virtues was an epitome of the essentials of Christianity.

However, a scientific study was not made until
the Middle Ages, in the great Summae of Peter Lombard, Peter of Poitiers,
William of Auxerre and Alexander of Hales, terminating in the definitive work
of St. Thomas. His analysis of theological virtue remains standard, and figures
extensively in all his major writings, especially the Summa Theologica.

St. Thomas defines virtue as “a good habit
bearing on activity” or a good faculty — habit (habitus operativus bonus).
Generic to the concept of virtue, then, is the element of habit, which stands
in a special relation to the soul, whether in the natural order or elevated
to the divine life by grace.

The soul is the remote principle or source
of all our activities; faculties are the proximate sources built into the soul
by nature; habits are still more immediate principles added to the faculties
either by personal endeavor or by supernatural infusion from God. Consequently
the soul helps the man, faculties help the soul, and habits help the faculties.

Habits reside in the faculties as stable dispositions
or “hard to eradicate” qualities that dispose the faculties to act in a certain
way, depending on the type of habit. If the habit is acquired it gives the faculty
power to act with ease and facility; if it is infused, it procures not readiness
in supernatural activity, but the very activity itself. Natural or acquired
habits result from repeated acts of some one kind; they give not the power to
act, but the power to act readily and with dexterity. Thus in the natural order,
the faculty without the habit is simple power to act, the faculty with the habit
is power to act with perfection. Since custom is parent to habit, it is called
second nature. Faculty is like first nature, and habit the second.

Not every habit is a virtue, but only one that
so improves and perfects a rational faculty as to incline it towards good —
good for the faculty, for the will and for the whole man in terms of his ultimate
destiny.

There is a broad sense in which we can speak
of the natural dispositions of any of our powers as innate virtues, but this
is a loose rendering and leads to confusion. More properly, the infused virtues
should be contrasted with the acquired habits, in which the autonomous will
of the individual plays the dominant role. My consistent effort to concentrate
on a given course of action, repeating the process over a long period of time
and in spite of obstacles, gradually develops a tendency to perform the action
spontaneously and almost without reflection, yet to adegree of perfection
that someone else without the virtue cannot duplicate.

The infused virtues are independent of the
process. They are directly produced by God in the operative faculties of a man,
and differ mainly from the acquired virtues because they do not imply the human
effort which determines the faculty to a particular kind of activity, namely
facility induced by repetition. God Himself pours in (infundere) the
infused virtues, not by compulsion or overriding the free will of man, but without
dependence on us, which Augustine says, “are produced in us by God without our
assistance.” They are supernatural gifts, freely conferred through the merits
of Christ, and raise the activity of those who possess them to the divine level
in the same way that sanctifying grace elevates their nature to a share in the
life of God. They are supernatural precisely because they transcend the natural
capacities of mind and will either to acquire or operate.

Among the infused virtues, however, some are
concerned directly with God and operate in a field in which the unaided reason
cannot work; they are called theological. Others have as their object not God
Himself, the final end of all things, but human activities that are penultimate
and subordinate to the final end; they are called moral and, because four of
them (prudence, fortitude, temperance, and justice) are primary, said to be
cardinal (cardo, hinge) in human conduct.

Aquinas argued of the necessity for theological
virtues from a simple analysis of man’s elevation to the supernatural order.
Our final happiness may be considered in two ways. One is commensurate with
our human nature, and therefore a happiness obtainable by the use of our native
powers of mind and will. The other is immeasurably higher, surpassing nature,
and secured only from God by the merciful communication of His own divinity.
To make it possible to attain this higher destiny in the beatific vision, we
must have new principles of activity, which are called theological virtues because
their object is God and not, as in moral virtues, merely things that lead to
God; because they are infused in the mind and will by God alone, as opposed
to the habits acquired by personal exercise; and because they would never be
known to us, except through divine revelation.

Reflecting on the data of Scripture and tradition,
Thomas finds a striking reasonableness in the kind of virtues that God infuses
in the soul. They direct us to supernatural happiness in the same way that our
natural inclinations lead to our connatural end, i.e., in two ways. First, we
must have light for the mind, both of principles and practical knowledge, and
then rectitude for the will to have it tend naturally to the good as defined
for us by reason.

Both of these, however, fall short of the order
of supernatural happiness, where “the eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither
has it entered into the heart of man, what things God has prepared for those
who love Him.” Consequently, in both cases man had to receive something additional
to lead him to a supernatural end.

For his intellect he receives supernatural
principles, held by means of divine light, which are the articles of belief
accepted on faith. His will is directed to the same end in two ways: as an intentional
drive moving towards that destiny to attain it (which is hope), and as a kind
of spiritual union that somehow transforms the will into the goal it is seeking
(which is charity).

Theological virtues supply for the mind and
will what neither faculty has of itself, the salutary knowledge, desire and
love of God and of His will, without which there could be no supernatural order,
which means voluntary choice of suitable means to reach the heavenly goal
to which we are elevated. These virtues make us well adjusted to our last end,
which is God Himself; hence they are called theological, because they not only
go out to God — as all virtue worthy of the name must do — but they also reach
Him. To be well adjusted to our destiny we must know and desire it; the desire
demands that we are in love with the object to which we are tending and are
confident of obtaining it. Faith makes us know the God to whom we are going,
hope makes us look forward to joining Him, and charity makes us love Him.

Unlike the virtues known to philosophy, faith,
hope, and charity are not applications of the golden mean between extremes.
In Aristotle’s language, a moral virtue is a certain habit of the faculty of
choice, consisting of a mean (mesotes) suitable to our nature and fixed
by reason in the manner in which a prudent man would fix it. It is a habit which
consists in a mean between excess and defect. Courage keeps the balance between
cowardice and reckless daring; sincerity between ironical deprecation and boastfulness;
and modesty between shamelessness and bashfulness.

But a theological virtue can be measured by what the virtue demands or by what
our capacity allows. Concerning the first, “God Himself is the rule and mode
of virtue. Our faith is measured by divine truth, our hope by the greatness
of His power and faithful affection, our charity by His goodness. His truth,
power and goodness outreach any measure of reason. We can certainly never believe,
trust or love God more than, or even as much as, we should. Extravagance is
impossible. Here is no virtuous moderation, no measurable mean; the more extreme
our activity, the better we are.” [4]

Nevertheless, there is a valid sense in which
even the theological virtues observe a kind of mean, or better, a center of
gravity to which they tend. As far as God is concerned, He can never be believed
in, trusted or loved too much. But from our point of view, we should exercise
these virtues according to the measure ofour condition. Christian faith
goes midway between heretical extremes, for instance between Pelagianism which
dispenses with divine grace and Jansenism that denies a free will; Christian
hope must choose a path among the numerous prospective means of salvation; and
Christian charity must find a balance in the myriad opportunities for loving
God.

Infused Moral Virtues

Besides the theological virtues of faith, hope
and charity, St. Thomas teaches that a person in divine friendship receives
an infusion of the moral virtues whose immediate object is not God Himself but
the practice of human actions conducive to man’s final end. Just as faith, hope
and charity correspond in the supernatural order to natural knowledge, hope
and love, so there are other divinely infused habits to supplement and match
these theological virtues; habits which are elevated counterparts of the acquired
virtues of prudence, temperance, fortitude and justice.

Aristotle was again the basic source on which
St. Thomas built the now familiar structure of the cardinal virtues which are
reduced to four because of the objective order of morality. The mind must first
discover this order and propose its commands to the will; prudence, or the habit
of doing the right thing at the right time, is reason’s helper. The will, in
turn, must execute these commands in its own field; justice, or the habit of
giving everybody his due, temperance is helper to the will in its management
of the appetite’s desires, and fortitude helps to manage the same appetite’s
aversions.

Just as there are four faculties which contribute
to our moral acts; intellect, will, appetite of desire and appetite of aversion,
so there must be four virtues to keep these faculties straight — prudence for
the mind, justice for the will, temperance for the urge to what is pleasant,
and fortitude for the instinct away from what is painful. The Latins summarized
their functions in the words, circumspice (look around), age (act),
abstine (keep away from) and sustine (bear up with).

All other virtues in the moral order can be
referred to this tetrad as their potential parts. In view of their practical
value as possessions of nature (also infused by grace), it is worth examining
in some detail.

The principal act of prudence is the practical
executive command of right reason, and the following virtues come within its
orbit; good counsel, sound judgment when the ordinary rules of
conduct are concerned, and a flair for dealing with exceptional cases.

As regards justice, its classical type renders
what is due between equals, but other virtues come under the general heading
of justice. Some render what is owing to another, but not as to an equal. Others
deal with a situation where both parties are equal, yet the due or debt, though
demanded by decency, cannot be enforced by law, and so is not an affair of strict
justice. In the first category of these phases of justice comes religion,
which offers our service and worship to God, then piety and patriotism,
which render our duty to parents and country, then observance, which
shows reverence to superiors, and obedience to their commands. In the
second category come gratitude for past favors, and vindication when
injury has been done; also truthfulness, without which social decency
is impossible, liberality in spending money, and friendliness or
social good manners.

The respective parts of fortitude, on the attacking
side, are confidence, carried out with magnificence, which reckons
not the cost, and magnanimity, which does not shrink from glory. On the
defensive side is patience, which keeps an unconquered spirit, and can
be protracted into perseverance.

Finally, the subordinated kinds of temperance are continence, which
resists lustfulness and evil desires concerned with touch, clemency which
tempers punishment, meekness that tempers anger, modesty in our
deportment, including disciplined study, reasonable recreation and
good taste in clothes. [5]

Aquinas concluded with the necessity of infused
moral virtues from the principle of consistency between the natural and supernatural.
It is obvious, he reasoned, that a person in the state of grace performs actions
of other virtues than just the theological, that is, of justice, prudence, temperance
and fortitude. These actions are essentially supernatural, and therefore require,
besides the state of grace, moral habits that are equally supernatural. Otherwise
we should postulate an imbalance in the moral order, since God’s ordinary providence
uses secondary causes of the same kind as the effects produced. If we are to
have truly supernatural acts of justice and chastity, for example, we should
have infused supernatural virtues that proximately bring these actions about.

In the last analysis, there must be infused
moral virtues, in addition to the theological, because of faith in the person
justified. A moral virtue, by definition, avoids extremes. It does not offend
against right reason by excess or by defect. But once the faith is had, there
is not question of limiting the practice of moral virtue by reason alone. Faith
sublimates reason as the standard of moderation; and just as prior to faith
there are acquired virtues commensurate with reason to assist the natural mind
and will in the performance of morally good acts, so with the advent of faith
there should be corresponding supernatural virtues commensurate with the light
of faith to assist the elevated human faculties in the performance of supernaturally
good actions in the moral order.

A slight problem arises from the fact that
the infused virtues are necessarily spiritual and the infusion must directly
take place in the mind and will, in spite of the fact that two of the virtues,
temperance and fortitude, involve the sense appetite. One explanation is to
have the virtues immediately enter the spiritual faculties, and these in turn
affect the lesser powers as called upon for moral action.

Here, if anywhere, the familiar dictum that
“grace does not destroy but builds upon nature” is eminently true. All that
we say about these virtues as naturally acquired qualities holds good for the
infused virtues, but much more. With reason enlightened by faith, the scope
of virtuous operation is extended to immeasurably wider horizons. By the same
token faith furnishes motives of which reason would never conceive, and theological
charity offers inspiration that surpasses anything found in nature.

Epilogue

Aquinas and Aristotle both recognize that virtue
is not its own reward and has little meaning apart from an ultimate goal. A
man is virtuous because his actions correspond to an objective norm, which for
Aristotle was knowable by reason and for Aquinas by reason and faith.

But where Aristotle almost identified morally
good conduct with an aesthetic mean between opposite extremes, Aquinas saw the
good man with a vision that Aristotle never enjoyed. For Aristotle, a man was
basically virtuous because he displayed a beautiful balance in his moral actions,
not unlike the harmony displayed in a work of art. Hence the attractive aspect
of virtue is often stressed by Aristotle and his modern imitators, at the expense
of morality proper. What was missing were two dimensions of morality that only
the Christian religion brought into full light: that internal dispositions and
their consequent actions are virtuous not mainly because of an aesthetic harmony
of agent, conduct and environment, but because they advance their possessor
in the direction of his final destiny to eternal life after death; and that
virtue is more than a reasonable balance between behavioristic extremes, since
it postulates a primal obligation to a divine Lawgiver, whose will is manifest
in conscience and faith, and to whom obedience is due as man’s Creator and Lord.